Artangel Interaction presents When Night Draws In : A collaboration between Sarah Woodfine and artists from Wandsworth Mind

“It feels like the trees can move and grab you at night enclosing you in their strong pliable branches, allowing the creatures to touch you. You can easily get lost both physically and mentally. When the moon shines on the trees it gets really scary, glittering darkly in the dank dark night.”

Artangel Interaction’s Nights of London series of artist-led collaborations explores aspects of the nocturnal city with people who have a special connection to or unusual perspective on it. The latest project in this series, When night draws in, explores the familiar yet fantastical terrain of the night, when the darkness distorts and transforms elements of the real, creating space for the imagination to roam free. From eerie forests glittering darkly in the moonlight to bats swarming around a gothic castle, prowling urban cats to peaceful country scenes, these images reveal personal tales of what lies in the night. At once beguiling and unsettling, these works ask us to examine the worlds we invent for ourselves after dark.

Award-winning artist Sarah Woodfine has collaborated with fourteen adults, who use two mental health resource centres run by Wandsworth Mind. Together they undertook a creative journey through the nocturnal metropolis. Wandsworth Mind provides community based social care for people who experience long term mental health issues. For many of the individuals who took part in this project, probing their experiences of the night time revealed a mixture of emotions surrounding it. Beginning with concepts and processes rooted in Woodfine’s drawing-based practice, they collectively experimented with the transformation of drawing into pop-up, model landscapes and theatre sets, working solely in black and white. The final works play on the apparent three-dimensionality of these dreamlike worlds. In drawing their picture frames Woodfine has been able to share her very individual and quite controlled way of working with others who enjoy a passion, as one participant put it, “for working from the imagination”. An exhibition of these works, alongside drawings and objects made during the project will be available to view at The Chaplaincy, Digby Stuart College, Roehampton University.

1. Exhibition will be held at The Chapel, Digby Stuart College, Roehampton University, open daily 11am - 6pm. The Chapel can be accessed from the Main Entrance of the university on Roehampton Lane, London SW15. The exhibition is held in association with Digby Stuart College and the School of Arts, Roehampton University.

3. Wandsworth Mind provides services and facilities which prevent and treat mental health problems and distress, educate the public and enable those who have suffered mental stress to resettle in the community. They manage two mental health resource centres (Heathside and Patricia Benians), a large number of supported housing in partnership with local housing associations, two work-experience projects and a self-help project in Battersea. Wandsworth Mind is affiliated to Mind (The National Association for Mental Health). Mind aims to work for a better life for everyone in England and Wales with experience of mental ill health. For more information see www.mind.org.uk

4. Artangel has pioneered new ways of collaborating with artists and engaging audiences in an ambitious series of new commissions since the early 1990s, including Rachel Whiteread’s House (1993), Michael Landy’s Break Down (2001), Gregor Schneider’s Die Familie Schneider (2004), Kutlug Ataman’s Kuba (2005), and its most recent project, Seven Walks by Francis Alys (2005).

Artangel Interaction is an ongoing series of participatory projects operating outside formal arts education or institutional settings. The initiative actively involves artists and writers working with people who are often not reached by conventional arts education or outreach programmes. It offers participants opportunities to immerse themselves in creative projects with artists that take their own interests, knowledge and passions as a starting point and lead to a sense of shared investment and achievement in the artistic process. Artangel Interaction’s ongoing programme, Nights of London, is a series of artist-led projects exploring the nocturnal metropolis with small groups of people who wake, work or watch over it. It includes Radio Nights, a documentary film by artist David Blandy and the Avenues Youth Project, Westminster, investigating the nocturnal worlds and musical innovations of West London's minority and pirate radio broadcasters, and Night Haunts, an online ‘nocturnal journal’ by writer Sukhdev Sandhu chronicling his adventures in the London night.

5. Artangel Interaction is funded by The National Lottery through Arts Council England, John Lyon’s Charity, Oliver and Mala Haarman and the generous support of Elizabeth and Vincent Meyer. Artangel is supported by Arts Council England, London, the Company of Angels, Artangel International Circle and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.